blistered

I love my all-stars. I’m not usually attracted to particular brands of shoes or clothing, but I’ve been loyal to Converse since high school. I love them because they are flat and light – usually a good combination for city walking.

But not this city.

From the impossibly narrow passages of Alfama to the broad symmetry of the baixa, Lisbon’s streets have a lot of character. They also have a lot of stones. Roads, sidewalks, plazas, patios, garden pathways – all cobblestones. The black-and-white diamonds, arranged in wide waves downtown or with a simple border just outside my door, are part of the city’s charm.

The variety of calçada patterns can be enjoyed with the eyes, but the rich variety in tilt and texture – that is a story only your soles can tell. If you haven’t gotten a stiletto stuck in a crack, stubbed a toe on a corner or gotten blisters through your all-stars, you haven’t walked the city enough.

Somewhere along the line (at cobble stone no. 23587001 or something) someone got tired of sanding those buggers down – and the subsequent centuries of being stepped on haven’t helped. And so while the cobblestones are beautiful to see, they do not do beautiful things to your feet.

That’s why I’m at home this morning, nursing my blisters with some self-indulgent blog writing. Raw flesh aside, my urban hike was most enjoyable. My morning caffeine must of kicked in after I finished reading the paper at a café in Areeiro – I decided to walk to my next destination despite the fact that it didn’t really look that close on the map.

So I strolled along the Northern edge of Lisbon, stopping to admire ­Campo Pequeno, the Moorish-style arena where men in colourful suits stick pokey-things in understandably upset bulls. A few blocks down is the Universidade Nova de Lisboa’s faculty of social sciences. I poked around in the library where I laughed at seeing TV Paul’s International Order and the Future of World Politics (you remember the green book from POLI 244) in a display case. Poor Portuguese political science students! I am a native English speaker, TV Paul was my professor…and I still didn’t enjoy wading through that book.

My actual destination was the Calouste Gulbenkien Foundation’s gardens and museum. Gulbenkien was an Armenian (born in Istanbul) oil mogul, who spent his riches buying out the Hermitage after the 1917 Russian Revolution (among others). He was living in England in WWII when the British remembered he was Turkish and kicked him out. Portugal essentially bid out the rest of Europe to acquire Gulbenkien and his collections.

(If you're wondering about the picture, I followed the arrows to "...")

I would say that my visit was worth several times over what it cost me – except that as a student I got in for free (yes ISIC card!). It was a museum of utterly manageable size, small rooms dedicated to Egyptian, Roman, Greek, East Asian, Islamic and European art.

My favourite was the Islamic Art. There were gorgeous silk coats from the Safavid period in Persia (18^th cent.), mosque lamps from when the Mameluks had run of Egypt, and – Ipek – the most stunning Turkish tiles from Iznik (16^th cent). There was one panel in turquoise and cobalt that has helped me understand Ipek’s penchant for blues...

There were plenty of other neat things – illuminated scripts from the Armenian Church, an enormous twelve-panel Chinese screen, an ornate grandfather clock ticking at today’s time, long Persian rugs. There was a sizeable collection of European paintings – Monet, Renoir, Manet in the French collection. My favourite was the last piece, “Painter Brown and his Family” by Boldoni. It was so captivating – looked like a candid photograph. Brown in the center, mid-stride, his daughter and wife behind, the daughter caught in the beginnings of a smile, the wife only half in the frame. There was probably a full fourth of the canvas that didn’t have anything in it all. It was totally asymmetric and all in dark browns and greys and blacks – and yet was so pleasing to me.

Culture makes me hungry, so I sat by the lake (the museum is in a garden) and ate my lunch with the ducks. I didn’t feed them, but many other children did. I had never seen a fish fight (and beat) a duck for a crumb of bread before...

I was ready for a nap in the shade of a treeso I walked down town (but up a hill) to Parque Eduardo VII which has one of the best views of the city. I never got my nap though – my (current) friend and (former) serial summer fling Bruno called and I ended up going for drinks and then dinner with him and his girlfriend.

By the time I was dropped at my door I had been out of the house for about 13 hours and my feet were in the state that motivated this entry.

All in a day’s tourism – at least in this city.